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Soccer / Prepare for the coming of the quartermaster By David Marouani and Moshe Harush During his four months with Ran Ben Shimon, the recently fired coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv, Marco Balbul, was the silent partner. Balbul, who came to Maccbi with Ben Shimon as his assistant coach, was seen but not heard - not in team meetings, not in coaching staff sessions and not in management meetings. From the day he arrived, Balbul put out the pylons before practice and collected them at the end before turning out the lights. Advertisement Players got their first sense of him in the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv last week, when the assistant coach kicked a Styrofoam cooler laying next to him (which is expected to land him in a disciplinary tribunal). Now that the reins of power have changed, perhaps Maccabi players will get to know the man who has been practically absent, the man some figures in the club derisively call "Mr. Pylon." Beyond setting up practices, Balbul tried to contribute to the team by maintaining relations with the players' agents, but some of them say they quickly tired of him. They say Balbul would tend to ask for a videotape of one player and then after watching it ask about another player in the same tape, which made him seem untrustworthy. The fact that he would often answer them by saying he would consult with Ben Shimon and get back to them quickly made him irrelevant to them, others recall. Balbul, a former defender, started his coaching career at Maccabi Haifa where he was also a player. He was a defensive coordinator there under Avram Grant. When Yitzhak Shum came to the club immediately after Grant's departure for the national team, Balbul became an official assistant coach. Associates who were involved with Maccabi Haifa say Grant and Balbul were regularly at odds. In one instance, Balbul suggested to the veteran coach that he add variety to the training regimen. "Your practices are a little outdated," one source recalls Balbul telling Grant. "Let's do some things that will wake up the players." Shum reportedly wasn't pleased when Balbul said, "I am the coach and don't interfere with my work," he allegedly shot back. "Focus on your concerns." Luckily for Balbul, Yaakov Shahar, the team's boss, gave Balbul his backing and let him remain as assistant coach under Ronny Levy, Shum's replacement. Levy evaluated Balbul and decided he would rather put someone else in charge of scouting. He eventually got rid of Balbul with a lot of backing from within the club. During that period, players nicknamed him "Quartermaster." A former associate in Haifa recalls that was basically Balbul's job. "Over time he served as nothing more than a shadow in the training pitch." After Haifa, Balbul tried his hand at being head coach for Hapoel Beer Sheva and later Maccabi Herzliya. He didn't last long in either place. Eli Zino, who was the owner of Beer Sheva at the time, says Balbul is fine as an assistant but lacks the craftiness and action required of being a successful head coach. Balbul returned to assistant coaching for the 2006/07 season, this time at Maccabi Netanya under Ton Kaanen, who got fired under controversial circumstances before he even coached a single game. Still, Balbul stayed on under Kaanen's replacement, Eli Guttman, until the two were canned along with the entire coaching staff after the end of the season. He got a second chance last season at Hapoel Beer Sheva after Alona Bareket took over control of the team. Despite hopes of taking the team back to the Premier League, he in fact went nowhere and lost his job after 12 games. That is how he was available for Ben Shimon at Tel Aviv. If nothing else, Balbul's quiet attitude makes him a steady rock in stormy weather. This season marks the third time he has stayed with the team that prematurely fired the head coach. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Never walk alone It's safe to assume that Obama won't abandon Israel. Apprehensive in Israel Rightist MK Aryeh Eldad warns 'Israel should be wary of Barack Obama'

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